At a global economic summit on Sunday that was attended by a number of mediators, Saudi Arabia declared that the international community had failed Gaza and restated its demand for a Palestinian state.
“The situation in Gaza obviously is a catastrophe by every measure humanitarian, but also a complete failing of the existing political system to deal with that crisis,” Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said during the first day of a Saudi-hosted World Economic Forum special meeting.
Only “a credible, irreversible path to a Palestinian state” will prevent the world from confronting “this same situation two, three, four years down the line,” he said.
The conference is being held in Riyadh, the metropolis of the largest crude oil exporter in the world, and is being attended by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Palestinian leaders, and high-ranking officials from other nations who are attempting to mediate a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
On October 7, the Palestinian organization Hamas launched an unprecedented offensive on southern Israel, sparking the start of the Gaza War and the subsequent spike in tensions in the region.
About 1,170 people died as a result of it, the most of them civilians, according to an AFP count of Israeli government numbers.
Israel calculates that 129 hostages, 34 of whom the military claims are deceased, who were taken by terrorists on October 7 are still being held in Gaza.
Israel’s counteroffensive, which it claimed would destroy Hamas, has killed at least 34,454 people in Gaza, the majority of them being women and children, according to the ministry of health that is managed by Hamas.
Mahmud Abbas, the president of Palestine, stated in a speech in Riyadh that the US “is the only country capable” of stopping Israel’s long-awaited invasion of Rafah, a city in southern Gaza.
“We appeal to the United States of America to ask Israel to stop the Rafah operation,” he said, warning it would harm and displace civilians, and be “the biggest disaster in the history of the Palestinian people”.
